One of the greatest dilemmas facing American students today is the perennial threat of leftist indoctrination on college campuses. In recent years, institutions of higher learning – which have historically been places for enlightened thought and dissenting opinions – have increasingly become breeding grounds for radical liberalism.

It’s easy to forget sometimes that the president is commander-in-chief. The economy frequently demands our attention, and seldom more urgently than it does at this moment. That’s why it was heartening to see the last debate between the Republican candidates focus on foreign policy.

The press has tried to cover it as accurately as they can. However, without one side continually engaging the community and feeding them good information, they are writing the story with one hand tied behind their back.

The good news – maybe – is that, "Several members of Congress, especially Republicans on the House and Senate Armed Services Committees, are readying legislation that would undo the automatic across-the-board cuts" according to a New York Times report.

Sarah Palin isn’t the only one who dances after a successful hunt. Deer season opened this month over much of the country. So some serious boogieing is underway by us hunters—everything from the Hustle and Bump to the Boot ‘Scootin Boogie and Cha-Cha-Cha!

In the middle of the 19th century, a new political party emerged dedicated to two great moral struggles. The Republican Party pledged in its original platform to fight the “twin relics of barbarism”: slavery and polygamy.

Before we start, let me advise everyone whose time is valuable that today's MULLINGS is not going to be worth it. Go get a bagel and a cup of coffee, instead. Bye. I have a Google Alert on myself. I have often said that I have that to make sure I have been quoted correctly, but it is really because I have an ego the size of Wyoming.

Among President Obama’s many broken promises, none is as obvious as his failure to slow the growth of the nation’s debt. Instead of cutting annual deficits in half, as promised, he racked up record annual deficits and rapidly accelerated our accumulation of debt, which recently surpassed an unthinkable $15 trillion.

How far is the Obama administration willing to go to foist ‘green’ jobs onto a pedestal? Why are politics coming before the stewardship of taxpayer dollars? Why was this administration so dedicated to propping up the solar power company Solyndra?

You can't spell "accountability" without "A," "C" and "T." But in Washington, government officials routinely get away with "taking personal responsibility" by mouthing empty words devoid of action. Heads nod in collective agreement that mistakes were made. But heads never roll. The Obama administration has raised this accountability charade to an art form.

In advance of Tinseltown's parade of Christmas insensitivities -- they've already unloaded the marijuana movie "A Very Harold and Kumar 3-D Christmas" -- let us stipulate that it's not just seasonal. The manufacturers of pop culture thrive on offending every traditional value.

It is open season for the liberal media on any GOP presidential candidate who displays the audacity to surge in the polls, the latest targets being Herman Cain and Newt Gingrich. A reasonable case can be made for some of these criticisms, and conservatives often concede the weaknesses, but there is no justification for this same media's ongoing cover-up for the current White House occupant.

In Italy, Mario Monti of Yale University, the European Commission, the Trilateral Commission and the Bilderberg Group has formed a government of “technocrats” who, like members of Obama’s administration, contains a number of high academic degrees and have experience in government bureaucracies but offer little else.

President Reagan’s famous dictum, which he often quoted to Mikhail Gorbachev in Russian, was Trust but Verify. (In Russian, it rhymes: Doverai, no proverai.) President Obama has recognized that Reagan was a “transformational” president. He says he gave the old man credit, though he never gave him his vote.

Not one of the old "frogmen" or young Navy SEALs who gathered this week at the nearby National Navy UDT-SEAL Museum for the annual Muster wants to see another war. Those who came here are veterans of combat spanning from World War II to the present wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to numerous other unnamed fights around the world.

These are difficult and perilous times for boys. A distorted culture has robbed them of virtue to measure themselves against. The good once associated with masculinity in a patriarchal society has been tossed out with the bad. This, alas, is the era of feminist ascendency.

When the Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan closed shop on Sept. 30, it reported its "sobering but conservative" estimate that U.S. taxpayers had lost between $31 billion and $60 billion in waste and fraud of the $206 billion Uncle Sam has spent on contracts and grants in Iraq and Afghanistan. Of course, that's not all. According to the commission's final report, "a similar amount could be lost due to unsustainable projects and programs."

Back in August, during the debate over raising the debt ceiling, a record 82 percent of Americans disapproved of the way Congress was handling its job. Now, three months later, that all-time low dropped two more points to 84 percent as the debt supercommittee remains at an impasse over finding at least $1.2 trillion in deficit reductions before their Thanksgiving deadline.

As customers in Europe pull money out of banks, there is huge short term cash financing problems. The bazooka clearly wasn’t big enough, and I doubt seriously there is a bazooka big enough to temper the crisis.

I warned back in August that the Supercommittee was a tax increase trap. Republicans have this lemming-like instinct to jump off the cliff, even though they get taken to the cleaners every time they agree to real tax increases and get make-believe spending cuts in exchange.

I've been periodically describing intriguing big buyback plans from large companies to small-cap stocks at the tail end of each earnings season (companies typically pair buyback announcements with earnings releases). So with the third-quarter earnings season winding down, it's time for a fresh look at this theme.

The institutional weakness and security vulnerabilities of Guatemala and other Central American states mean that combating these trends will require significant help, most likely from the United States.

Thu, Nov 17, 2011

In a growing number of states around the country, legislators and other office holders are doing their best to stem the flow of taxpayer monies into Planned Parenthood’s coffers. And as they do this, it’s understood that they’re one judge away from having their legislation crippled or thrown out, and the financial lifeline to Planned Parenthood reopened.

The prospect of an Obama versus Cain contest in the general election is fascinating to contemplate. In fact, I believe that if Cain is on the ticket, it will make this election the most scrutinized in American history. It will have the promotional value of Don King’s “Thrilla in Manilla” but with the potential for genuine social and cultural change.

The debt limit deal that tasked a new “Super Committee” with finding major savings is about to hit its first important deadline, with the committee required to report a proposal by next week. The chance of the committee agreeing to a plan that produces the requisite $1.2 trillion in savings is becoming increasingly slim, which will lead to an across-the-board cut to federal spending.

The report issued by the International Atomic Energy Agency last week confirms that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei will soon have their fingers on nuclear triggers -- unless serious actions are taken. "The biggest threat to the United States,” a senior U.S. military official told reporters, “has come into focus and it's Iran.”

You know this story. Congress cannot get its act together, again. It is facing a government shutdown by this Saturday, again. It has retreated to secrecy, again. It seems redundant and ridiculous to say "here we go again," and yet that's what's happening.

“S***, p***, f***, c***, c*********, m***********, and t***” was George Carlin’s trademark joke of the Seven Words You Couldn’t say on Television. Carlin once said in explaining the joke that he “was always told to look up to firefighters and police officers” and that kind of language “was always used by authority.”

The media feeding frenzy over allegations of sexual harassment by Herman Cain is going to cause a shift in how we view sexual harassment. According to a University of Michigan research study last year, 90 percent of women report being sexually harassed in the workplace.

"What is the meaning of life?" my middle school daughter asked me recently as we were lying on her bed one evening. After a few minutes of contemplation, knowing that the answer was not about acquisition of money, fame or power, and that material items might provide ease in life, but not meaning, I responded that it is "to experience and then to allow God's Grace to shine through you to others."

Recently, an open mic caught French President Nicolas Sarkozy and American President Barack Obama jointly trashing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Sarkozy scoffed, "I cannot stand him. He's a liar." Obama trumped that with, "You're fed up with him, but I have to deal with him every day."

I don’t believe in the Trilateral and Bilderberg conspiracies. But I do believe that our world leadership suffers from a severe case of intellectual, political and corporate inbreeding that’s led them to dangerous defects in their vision for which there is no cure.

While I poll and analyze the 2012 presidential race straight down the middle, an equal opportunity offender, I am in a unique position to explain who "the new" Newt Gingrich is, and why he is starting to race up to the top of national and various state polls.

Republican voters' esteem for Newt Gingrich has been rising fast. At this rate it might someday equal, though not surpass, his regard for himself. Gingrich is not a person with an ego. He's an ego with a person.

The death of Fred Ikle last week inspires me to prophesy. Thus far, only the redoubtable Wall Street Journal has remarked on Fred's passing. That he was a formidable mind during the Cold War and important to the peaceful settlement of that decades-long struggle is remembered thanks to the Journal.

There is widespread international debate on the extent to which China’s naval expansions pose a threat to U.S. dominance of the world’s oceans. George Friedman and author and foreign affairs expert Robert Kaplan agree on China’s ambition, but have very different views on its geopolitical impact. It may be a case of their appetite being too big for their stomach.

In last weekend’s New York Times, Columbia Professor Jeffrey Sachs predicted and championed a new progressive movement that will allegedly restore “honest and effective government for all,” revive “crucial public services,” “end the climate of impunity” that encouraged fraud on Wall Street, and “re-establish” the supremacy of “people votes over dollar votes” in Washington, D.C., whatever that means.

I wonder what Smith would say today if he learned that Congressmen and Senators come to Washington, DC in the main, with limited wealth (sometimes with an exception), and leave with eye-popping assets.

I asked supercommittee co-chair Jeb Hensarling about an idea from the Democrats to raise taxes by $600 billion to $800 billion. About $300 billion of that might be upfront, with $500 billion later from some tax-reform overhaul.

Even prior to the Obama Administration's onslaught of new rules and regulations, the Small Business Administration estimated that federal regulation imposed a $1.75 trillion annual cost burden on the economy.

At this point, investors in a buying mood are faced with two choices: They can either focus on lower-risk blue chips that appear inexpensively valued and possess respectable upside. Or they can focus on riskier, beaten-down stocks that could rise much more sharply in an improving economy.

Today at 1:50 PM Mountain Time, I received a text showing me that Avago Technologies (AVGO) had fallen to $32.00, followed in quick succession by a text telling me that American Express (AXP) had fallen to $48.25. That gave me nine minutes to make a buy decision.

Gosh, what a surprise: According to the United Nations, Iran seems to be at work on developing a nuclear weapon. I am shocked -- shocked. Goodness, what target do you think the mullahs and their nutcase president, the all too imitable Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, might have in mind?

Mothers want to trust the Girl Scouts--an organization that nurtured great friendships, practical skills, and leadership qualities in their own lives. I wanted to trust them when my own daughter was a Brownie.

The American Left has been railing about Justice Clarence Thomas. His wife, Ginni Thomas, is a Tea Party supporter, and the CEO of LibertyCentral.org - a 501(c)(4) that focuses on the value of liberty with "insistence on limited government."

Are you glum about the nation's prospects? If so, you've got lots of company. According to a recent poll for The Hill, a Washington-based daily, 69 percent of American voters say the US is declining, and 83 percent of voters describe themselves as worried (49 percent say very worried) about the country's future.

Our congressionally caused recession has indeed caused needless hardship for many Americans, but the big poverty and income stagnation hype is part and parcel of an agenda to make us more accepting of politicians getting their hands deeper into our pocketbooks in the name of helping the poor.

National Public Radio proved a long time ago it disdains black conservatives. Remember when NPR's Nina Totenberg launched the unproven sexual harassment charges against Clarence Thomas? NPR doesn't even like black liberals who appear on Fox News: They canned Juan Williams.

He's baaack! Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich is back in the saddle after falling off his horse at the starting line. At least according to one poll (Public Policy Polling), Gingrich is actually the GOP front-runner.

Not content with the disaster that they have created in the rest of the country, the Senate, still under Democrat control, is now making a land-grab to regulate banking operations in Indian Country too, while denying them the basic tools for self-sufficiency.

A just released book, "Bowing to Beijing" by Brett M. Decker and William C. Triplett II, will change forever the way you think about China -- even if, like me, you already have the deepest worries about the Chinese threat. As I opened the book, I was expecting to find many useful examples of Chinese military and industrial efforts to get the better of the United States and the West.

Why do so many prominent pundits and politicos on the right who embraced Mitt Romney as their champion in 2008 reject him now as a gutless, unprincipled moderate and unworthy standard-bearer for the conservative cause?

When the Israeli government captured Nazi mass murderer Adolf Eichmann, journalist Hannah Arendt was struck by the fact that Eichmann appeared to be a nondescript accountant type. He was not highly intelligent, and he did not appear to be particularly vicious. This led Arendt to the conclusion that anyone could, under the right ideological circumstances, become evil.

Americans who follow the workings of our government -- even if only casually -- presumably know that the Republican Party took control of the U.S. House of Representatives in the November 2010 elections. Fewer likely know that the Republican-controlled House gained a veto over federal spending on March 4, 2011.

The Supreme Court will decide in the midst of the
2012 presidential election if the government for the first time in
U.S. history can force Americans under penalty of law to buy a product
they may not want, need or can afford.

The American Civil Liberties Union has pulled out all stops to keep women from viewing ultrasound pictures of their babies in the womb before deciding whether to abort them. The ACLU asks, “If you don’t see the baby, is it still a baby?”

A couple of months ago, Deputy Assistant Attorney General Beth Brinkmann was standing before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, defending the federal law requiring Americans to buy government-approved health insurance, when Judge Laurence Silberman asked her about broccoli. Specifically, he wanted to know whether a law requiring Americans to buy broccoli would exceed the federal government's authority to regulate interstate commerce.

In March 1964, New York City was rocked by the grisly murder of Kitty Genovese. Returning home from her job at a local sports bar, Genovese was attacked in the parking lot of her apartment complex and stabbed in the back while fleeing from her assailant. The murderer later returned to find Genovese collapsed in an exterior hallway of the complex (she was slowly suffocating from a punctured lung), and there he stabbed her several more times before raping her lifeless body.

So how could passage of this bill benefit investors? The Nat-Gas Act provides heavy financial incentives to encourage the adoption of vehicles that run on compressed natural gas (CNG) and other gas-derived fuels.

The effort is spearheaded by Phillip Jauregui, President of Judicial Action Group, a Washington based organization dedicated to "judicial renewal" by returning "the judiciary to its proper role of deciding cases and not legislating from the bench."

If the internet is a real world example of how classical economics can best benefit society, why are we so hell bent on regulating, setting prices and trade standards and all the rest of the micro manipulating government does to try and “manage” a marketplace?

For the generation of leadership born just after World War II that came to political maturity in the last 20 years, the European project was an ideological given and an institutional reality. Not anymore.

Novembers during off-election years in Washington, DC are typically pretty serene. The autumn colors stream up and down Georgetown by the Potomac, while lawmakers gingerly ease into the holidays, knowing full well the next year will have them in complete campaign mode. Not so for 2011.

A recent news article praised a children’s book for promoting the biological fiction that a child can have “two moms” or “two dads.” The article contained one of the saddest passages I’ve seen in a news story:

My new book, "American Bombshell: A Tale of Domestic and International Invasion," has just been published almost in lockstep with poor Texas Gov. Rick Perry's Republican-primary debate gaffe. It's convenient timing, because both of these things depict the emphasis on buzz and style over substance in today's media and politics.

Once again, tensions between Iran and the international community are on the rise as the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, released a new report that warns of concealed attempts by Iran to produce an atomic bomb. How should one respond?

The major headline on the Drudge Report said it all: NEWT ON TOP. Largely written off as a potential Republican candidate for president as recently as last month, Newt Gingrich has suddenly surged to the head of the pack. But do his past moral failures disqualify him from leading a party that claims to stand for strong, conservative family values?

On Nov. 4, at precisely the moment Herman Cain was basking in applause at a conservative activists' gathering in Washington, D.C., Newt Gingrich was in a small conference room at the Marriott Hotel here discussing cognitive illness with three brain scientists.

President Obama's various remarks at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation CEO business summit in Honolulu over the weekend show he is simply incapable of growing in office. In just a few short statements, we saw many of the familiar practices through which he has alienated such a large percentage of the American people and damaged the economy.

Despite the expiration of one program, the US government is still giving money to so-called “green” companies under another Obama program. But rather than giving money as loan guarantees as the DOE was doing, this money is an outright gift to private companies with no strings attached by the US Treasury.

The alleged sexual abuse of young boys by former defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky is disgusting, outrageous, and immoral. That so many at the school's highest level allegedly engaged either in covering up serial abuses, or turned a blind eye to them in order to maintain the "integrity" of the football program and its legendary coach, Joe Paterno, adds insult to unfathomable injury.

I periodically write and regularly broadcast about male-female issues because I want to help men and women, especially husbands and wives, get along better. But I have developed a secondary reason: to elicit left-wing reactions. They reveal an enormous amount about how the left thinks.

US Embassy cables leaked by Wikileaks in September exposed the ugly truth that self-described champions of Israeli democracy would like us to forget about the actual goals of Israel's self-described human rights organizations.

As anticipated, the U. S. Supreme Court will join 300 million fellow Americans in rendering judgment on Obamacare. But with this difference: The high court's judgment, expected next June, will be the judgment that sticks.

Ironically, Pat and Jon Stryker, the billionaire grandchildren of the company's founder and orthopedic surgeon Homer Stryker, have invested millions of their inherited fortunes electing Barack Obama and Democrats who passed the legislation that is destroying jobs and increasing costs at the company that made them rich.

Berkshire Hathaway received an exemption from the requirement, citing competitive needs for secrecy. If others knew of the firm's massive buying of IBM shares, then they would have mimicked the move and pushed the stock price up quickly.

We can confirm however that investors appear to have shifted their attention to the fourth quarter of 2012, rather than 2012-Q3, in setting their forward-looking focus for setting today's stock prices.

Mon, Nov 14, 2011

Billed as the Commander in Chief Republican presidential debate, the CBS/National Journal foreign policy debate fell flat. When CBS anchor Scott Pelley introduced himself to the audience around 7:30pm he came across as a stuck up snob and somehow you knew the show wasn’t going to be great.

In reflecting on Reagan and Romney's role in the Republican Party, I drew inspiration from both men's words. Never being one of those activists who leaned heavily on "what would Reagan do" to cheaply win an argument full of intellectual void, I couldn't help but feel the very same conviction to rely on some of his words and formatting to argue for organized opposition to Romney's nomination.

I have mentioned to you before that when it comes to making political predictions I am exactly 50-50. I am wrong exactly as often as I am correct, thus you can't make any money betting on what I say, nor betting against me.

Are we going to continue in the direction of materialism and bureaucracy and share the fate of Europe?
Or will we make the tough decisions to get back on the path of prosperity, the path of faith and individual freedom?

I wish George Orwell were alive today. He could have seen just how right he was on such a wide range of issues. If he were still with us, I would show him an email written by University of Kentucky (UK) President Eli Capilouto.

In the stopover in Hawaii, in anticipation of speechifying to foreigners, the President of the United States revised slightly his grand apology speech on behalf of all of us Ugly Americans who are responsible for the world’s ills. We're not just ugly, we're lazy too.

The whole world was watching, and listening. The leaders of the G20 nations gathered in Cannes, France, for another of those endless schmooze fests we now call summits, Presidents Barack Obama and Nicolas Sarkozy were caught on tape telling us what they really think of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Obama is a national embarrassment and each day proves himself even more incapable of honestly confronting the nation’s urgent issues. Just days ago, Americans were once again left gob-smacked as Obama beat the drums for the SAVE awards, his signature effort to cut the $1.4 trillion annual deficit. This Obama initiative hopes to demonstrate the president’s commitment to fiscal sanity by cutting wasteful spending.

The question is not only if it’s worth it, but whether the left has, in effect, established a system that not only indoctrinates young Americans, but soaks them financially as well – and, incidentally, provides the ordained an exceedingly opulent lifestyle.

Just over a year ago, conservatives around the country rejected President Obama’s big-government agenda. Prior to the election, House Republicans pledged to “roll back government spending to pre-stimulus, pre-bailout levels.” Unfortunately, President Obama and his big-government allies did not share that goal, making real spending cuts hard to enact.

What makes Political Calculations unique in the world of blogs is the majority of our posts are focused on answering questions for which we don't already know the answers. We then do our best to answer those questions using all the problem solving skills we've gained over the years. Along the way, we create tools to help answer them and what's more, we post them here so you can see how we got to the answers we found.

Analysts fail to account for why gold is a hedge against inflation: it is ultimately an insurance policy against runaway currency collapse. In other words, it's intended as a longer-term, wealth-preserving purchase.

Energy is in one of the biggest bull markets we've ever seen. But unlike some other historic bull markets, such as the high-flying "New Economy" of the late 1990s, fundamentals are driving prices this time -- not delusions.

Sun, Nov 13, 2011

The FDA's gruesome new labels are not designed to provide consumers with useful information about the hazards of smoking. After 45 years of mandatory Surgeon General's warnings, every non-comatose American knows perfectly well that cigarettes are a noxious health risk.

Gov. Rick Perry stated at the outset of his presidential campaign that he is running for president based on his principles and leadership accomplishments, not his oratorical skills. Media focus on his debate missteps deliberately ignores Perry’s record and charisma.

The amount of real income that an average individual will earn at any point of their life can be reasonably determined from the average distribution of annual earnings by age and educational peer group over a period of years.

There are quite a few companies here for readers to explore. Stock investing is not for the faint of heart. There is as much to master on the emotional side as there is on the numerical side of financial decision-making.

President Obama announced a delay of more than a year to the true-shovel-ready XL Pipeline that would have created thousands of jobs and reduced America’s dependence on Middle Eastern oil. Instead of diversifying our energy supplies and suppliers, we remain reliant on unfriendly countries.

As for the liars, cheaters and gerrymanderers of American history -- Well the only hands that I see under someone else’s clothing are the left-wing puppet masters whose hands are up the backs of yellow journalists and boughtout judges.

Elizabeth Warren, anti-capitalism crusader and U.S. Senate candidate from Massachusetts, claimed she is the author of the intellectual foundation for OWS. As the arrests, violence and bodies continue to pile up, she’s walked that back some, but she did say it and did mean it, and, in many ways, it is true.

The only time in modern history that a third-party candidate got more votes than a major-party candidate was in 1912. Nearly 100 years later, Republican John McCain, who lost his own White House bid, suggests voters are angry enough with Washington to do that again.

Have you seen the new Occupy Wall Street ad campaign? Yes, I said the “ad campaign!” In a slick thirty-second video commercial, eight activists appear on camera, presumably gathered outdoors at an OWS event, and each describes in a sentence what they want from their country.

This past week I was in Texas with my family honoring our wounded troops with our 3rd annual Texas Purple Heart Hunt. For the last three years the Giles Tribe has gathered (along with several others) at one of Roy Burnes’ ranches to celebrate America and those who keep her safe by hunting deer and drinking beer while listening to great music as we roast the flesh with the best of the best. It was truly a great time deep in the heart of Texas.

The Bay Area has come down with a serious case of Protest Fatigue. The 99 percent of Northern Californians who want to go about their business are being jammed with protests and forced to pay for shutdowns imposed by the 1 percent of activists who don't know the difference between free speech and free camping.

One December day in 1984, a man named Bernard Goetz boarded a subway train in Manhattan. Shortly after, he was approached by four young men, all black, who requested money in a manner he took as threatening. Goetz, who had been mugged before, pulled out a pistol and opened fire, wounding all four.

We are in process of taking our power back. The political consequences of the peace? The end of the Warfare/Welfare State. This is inevitable. The only question is how long and costly will be the struggle.

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